Keith at Irvine Spectrum -- Saturday, 11Jan2014

When I got there the parking garage was almost full, but tough parking should mean lots of people, right? I don't know where they were hiding, though, 'cuz it didn't seem crowded at all.

But I had a kid party start up right away with a huge crowd of bystanders. After that faded away, a group of teenage girls in pajamas came by and danced for a long time. They must have been cheerleaders or something 'cuz they had some actual rehearsed routines going on, and gathered a small crowd of people watching them.

My little Spanish fan Gabby came by again, and this time she had her own toy guitar, in pink. I hadn't realized that she's interested in making music, not just listening to it, but she stood out in front of me with her guitar and mimicked my movements -- pretty accurate, too. After a while I asked to see the guitar, and it's just a toy so I thought it might be tunable, but it was so completely random that I couldn't figure out where to start and I didn't want to break one of her strings.

I've been learning Lindsey Buckingham's "Never Going Back Again", 'cuz it's a fingerpicking tour-de-force, and I just decided to see if I could conquer it. I thought I'd try it out late in the evening when nobody was around, but my hands were freezing and stiff, and I played it pretty badly. Of course I have to stare directly at my hands to manage it at all, but when I looked up at the end, two couples had materialized and stopped to watch. I guess it's gonna be worth the trouble, then.

Towards the end another group of teenage girls came by and were dancing to Disney songs. I'm starting to think that my best bet to gather a group is to just play Disney songs all the time. I usually don't play one until I'm asked to, but then as I'm playing it, more people gather 'round, so I'm gonna have to start playing them "on spec".

Anyway, these girls were dancing to song after song, and then they sort of tried to leave, so I cleverly started up "Part of Your World" from "The Little Mermaid", and they couldn't help but come running back. After a while they were holding hands in a circle and running around, and when some littler girls showed up (including my little kooky other Biggest Fan), they just opened up the ring and joined them right in. It was amazing and heartwarming to see them be so easily inclusive. Reminded me of my Indian Princess days...